Charge cards such as credit cards, debit cards, etc. have been extensively used in various type online or arm-length transactions for exchanges of proceeds with various products or services. Many users or merchants, including those in brick and mortar stores as well as those on the go, use mobile communication devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc.) paired with mobile point-of-sale (POS) terminals such as credit card terminals) to conduct transactions. Conventional POS terminals include credit card readers that are physically connected to a physical port such as an earphone jack on a mobile phone by using connectors, cables, etc. and those that are wireless connected to the mobile communication devices by using, for example, BLUETOOTH, BLUETOOTH low energy (BLE), or near field communication (NFC), or other similar types of protocols and devices with corresponding hardware modules. BLUETOOTH is a registered trademark of Bluetooth Sig, Inc., Kirkland, Wash.
In order to use the services provided by the POS terminal, a user or a merchant is often required to pair a POS terminal with a mobile communication device via a pairing process or a bonding process (e.g., the secure simple pairing (SSP) defined by the BLUETOOTH Core Specification ver. 2.1, etc.) during which the master device (e.g., the mobile communication device) issues a direct connection request, and the slave device (e.g., the card reader) responds to the request and sends its identity (e.g., the device name), its device class, the list of services, etc. to the master device.
The pairing process may be triggered manually and is complete when the link key, which represents a piece of shared information between the two devices, is stored on both the mobile communication device and the POS terminal Once the pairing process is complete, the two devices are connected through an asynchronous connection-less (ACL) link that may be encrypted for security purposes.